The Dreaming Game

One day, during a conversation, I heard the word ‘mindfulness’ for the first time. Awareness: being conscious of what is happening within life… Back then it was simply a new word to me. Over time, it came to mean something different.

You could be aware not only of the moment you were living, but also of what you felt within it. Perhaps awareness was not stepping outside life to look at yourself, but being right inside it and truly feeling the moment.

Years later, in another conversation, we began asking and answering questions. It was a little like a game. A question came, I answered, and a new question grew from the answer. Before long, we were talking our way through a house.

‘If you chose a house to spend the rest of your life in, would you want to see the sea from your window, or a forest?’

Without a second thought, I said, ‘The sea.’

‘And from which rooms would you like to see it?’

‘The living room, kitchen, bedroom, guest bedrooms… All of them!’

Within the first few questions, I found myself inside a house I had never lived in. I moved from the living room to the kitchen, looked out at the sea, considered where the rooms would be and imagined what kind of place it would become. A question arrived and I answered; each answer opened the way to the next question.

‘Wouldn't it be lovely to prepare a meal in the kitchen facing the sea?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘What shall we cook?’

‘Let's choose something Italian: mushroom risotto.’

‘What shall we put alongside the tomatoes in the salad?’

‘Rocket.’

As the questions continued, the kitchen slowly took shape. Thinking about what to serve with the risotto brought warm bread, olive oil and Kalamata olives to mind. Perhaps there would be a bottle of wine we had made ourselves. The table was gradually being set, and I found myself at it.

Then we talked about swimming in the morning.

‘It would be lovely to swim in the mornings.’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you feel when you enter the cool, salty water?’

‘I feel grateful to have reached the water and the blue.’

I stayed on that shore for a while. I thought about the water's coolness, its salt and its blue. I searched my mind for the feeling of swimming early in the morning.

Then I returned to the house.

‘Shall we turn the two-seater sofa to face the sea? We could watch it with a good coffee in the mornings.’

‘I think it should face the sea too.’

The sofa turned towards the sea. I sat on the veranda and thought about my coffee. Then another detail arrived.

‘While I put the dishes away, you can make the coffee. You will open a fresh packet and let me smell it first.’

With that sentence, the scent of coffee and the scent of the sea were in my mind at once. A few words had placed me inside a morning that had never happened.

Then we drank coffee on the veranda. There was a breeze. The sea was in front of us. We sat without hurrying, inside a life that understood small pleasures.

We even talked about how to prepare the coffee, and the textures and colours of the materials we would use in the kitchen.

‘We can boil the water on the stove when we make coffee. Not that rushed, artificial heat from an electric kettle. Then we will pour it slowly through the filter. We will use natural materials in the house as much as possible: metal, stone and wood…’

This time, I was describing not just how the house looked, but how I wanted to live in it. Without speeding things up. With fewer unnecessary things. From the materials I used to the way coffee was made, I was imagining a house where life flowed at its own pace.

Just then, I thought of Chesapeake Shores, a series I had recently enjoyed. One of the houses in its seaside town appeared in my mind. I had been drawn as much to the life inside as to the beauty of the house. It was somewhere you could walk to the shore, far from the rush of the city, with a rhythm of its own. But what I loved most was not the house itself. There was life inside it. There was family. Shared meals, long conversations, friends, celebrations, children, comings and goings, sometimes laughter, sometimes hurt, sometimes silence… A real home, where people entered one another's lives, shared things and accumulated memories. It was beautiful not because it was perfectly tidy, but because it was lived in.

The house in my mind was a little like that. Not simply a beautiful house with a sea view, but a home where life flowed, people dropped in, tables were set, friends came and celebrations happened. Sometimes busy, sometimes quiet, but always carrying the traces of living.

So when I was asked about the kitchen table and the colour of the walls, more than a colour came to mind.

‘There should be whites and creams, with touches of pale blue and sea blue. Natural wood tones would add warmth. Large windows, fresh flowers, seashells, blue-and-white ceramics and accessories…’

What I was describing was far more than a colour palette. I was talking not about how a home should look, but how I wanted it to be lived in.

The game that began with a house slowly reached into other parts of life. How I wanted to live, what I wanted to give time to, what I wanted more of and what I wanted less of all became part of the dream.

‘What does the bigger picture look like?’

I was surrounded by roses and lavender fields. I added vineyards too.

‘Shall we add a picture of the wine we make ourselves for modest celebrations?’

‘Of course. A full-bodied flavour, with a sweet, sour and tangy balance found after a few experiments. I imagine you at the edge of the fields too. You are wearing a cream dress. It contrasts with the colours behind you and suits you beautifully.’

Perhaps life does not always give us answers directly. It leaves a small question in front of us, and we follow it.

For me, that was where the real beauty of the game began. The questions did not give me ready-made answers. Instead, they drew answers out of me. I chose. I described. I added one detail to another. I connected a scent to a memory. I noticed how I wanted to live, at which table, in which home, facing which view.

After that conversation, I realised not only that I could imagine vividly, but that imagining helped me hear myself more clearly.

I could see more clearly what I loved, which details made me happy, what kind of home I would feel at ease in and at what pace of life I would feel like myself.

Perhaps that was the loveliest thing imagining left with me.

While thinking about something that had not yet happened, I began to see my present more clearly.

Mindfulness found a different place for me here too. Being in the moment was not simply noticing where I was. It was truly smelling the coffee, hearing what a sentence I spoke in conversation left within me, and wondering why a small detail made me smile.

There was a stronger connection than I had thought between feeling while imagining and feeling while living. Sometimes we think we want a house, a journey, a table, a job or another life. Perhaps what we want is less the house itself than the life inside it.

Less a table than the sharing around it. Less a sea view than the calm it brings within us. Less a coffee than having enough time to drink it without rushing.

Perhaps we may not have a house beside the sea. But we can drink our morning coffee slowly. We may not have a large dining table. But we can stay a little longer at the table with people we love. The life we dream of may not have arrived yet. But we can live a small part of the feeling we want from it today.

Perhaps dreaming is not about waiting for the future. It is about noticing today how we want to feel in that future.

The dream we made that day is still in my mind.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I see the sofa on the veranda. The sea is in front of me. Coffee is on the table. A light breeze is blowing. Vineyards in the distance, lavender nearby. There are people in the house. Perhaps someone is preparing something for the table, perhaps friends will arrive soon, perhaps laughter will float out of the kitchen.

And then I understand:
I had not really imagined a house. I had painted a small picture of the life I wanted to live inside it.

A dream becomes ours when we put something of ourselves into it. A scent, a sound, a taste, a view… Sometimes just a feeling we have in that moment.

Life is a little like that too.

Truly tasting a coffee, truly listening to the person beside us, noticing the warmth of the bread on the table… Being inside that moment.

Perhaps the dreaming game reminded me of this: not simply to live, but to be aware of the moment we are living.

Because sometimes not everything we dream of comes true. But a small part of the feeling we had while imagining can meet us in the flow of life. With something less or something more, in another form… With life's own particular flavour.

And perhaps that is what is beautiful.

Being able to stay in the moment, both while dreaming and while living.

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